Here’s a really interesting story from the Associated Press about the potential for a change in the way the Big Ten baseball season rolls out. The reasoning behind some of the thinking? The Big Ten wants to give northern teams a better shot at the NCAA tournament where teams from warmer climates tend to dominate.

We’ve all been to sporting events where entertainers show of their skills during short breaks in the action or at halftime. During the halftime break of Thursday’s Big Ten Women’s Tournament game between Nebraska and Northwestern, one entertainer’s performance veered a little off course. Watch the video here. That disc-catching dog missed one deep throw and veered off into the Wildcat cheerleaders, who were seated on the baseline of the court. But as you can see, the dog was all business and went right back out on the court to finish the show.

I took my usual spin around the Internet this morning and found my five conversation starters for Thursday. Click inside for a look at those stories, my take on each, and more links to the Big ten stories you need to read today.

The first day of the 2012 Big Ten Women’s Basketball Tournament featured four games on BTN/BTN2Go as Michigan beat Illinois, Nebraska handled Northwestern, Minnesota beat Wisconsin, and Michigan State eliminated Indiana. Get caught up on all of Thursday’s action on the interactive bracket or the scoreboard and get video highlights, interviews and recaps in this post.

Throughout the 2011-12 Big Ten men’s basketball season, we’re spotlighting Gus Johnson’s best calls. The popular play-by-play announcer is calling men’s hoops for BTN all winter long, and we’ll clip and post his best calls and archive them here. Feel free to bookmark the page and come back all season right up through the Big Ten tourney. Right now, watch Johnson’s call of the exciting final sequence in Wednesday’s Ohio State-Northwestern game and get all of his calls in this post.

No. 11 Ohio State beat Northwestern in the final seconds (recap) and Purdue dropped Penn State (recap) in our Super Wednesday doubleheader, presented by Buffalo Wild Wings. In other action, Iowa took down Nebraska (recap). Catch up on all three games on our BTN.com scoreboard and get immediate halftime and final recaps in this post.

Big Ten football is almost back. Spring practices are set to begin with Northwestern kicking off on March 3 and most sessions culminate with a spring game of sorts. Three schools have new head coaches (Illinois, Ohio State, and Penn State) and the usual roster turnover hits every squad, too. In anticipation of these practices, I took a quick look at three primary areas of development for each school. And here’s the list of spring dates I posted a while back.